In various facilities such as public offices, companies, schools, stores, and community facilities, a good many terminals such as personal computers are used. Office staff, company members, and teachers who engage in jobs, and students who do school work are users of these terminals. Most of these client terminals are connected to external networks represented by the Internet in addition to intranets, and are managed by management terminals via servers.
As an arrangement for managing and monitoring such client terminals, for example, a terminal monitoring system in which an administrator sets a management policy that restricts use functions of terminals, and when the system finds a management policy violator, it reports to the administrator is known (see patent reference 1). With this arrangement, a function of cutting off a connection from a client to a network can be implemented by reporting the management policy violator.
In a system that manages client terminals in facilities, an administrator who has expert knowledge about terminals is normally present during a usage-permitted time period prescribed by the facilities in association with use of terminals represented by a help desk or tutor.
However, in these facilities, terminals are often used during a time period when the administrator is absent or after the usage-permitted time period. For example, in a company, an employee may privately use a terminal after office hours.
Also, a terminal which is left ON may be left. In this case, even a relatively secure terminal which requires authentication at the time of startup may be operated by a third party, and inside information stored in the terminal may be leaked.
As a countermeasure against such problem, an arrangement in which a server manages client terminals, and turns off power supplies of terminals at a predetermined time is known (see patent reference 2).
Patent Reference 1: Japanese Patent No. 3904534
Patent Reference 2: Japanese Patent No. 3437176